The Drugstore Meeting
by Bright Silver Lady of Midnight
Summary: When Annabeth, Luke, and Thalia are on the move to Camp Half-Blood, Annabeth gets some good advice from an unexpected source.


Luke and Thalia very specifically told Annabeth to wait outside the drug store, so that's where she'd wait for them. They decided that having someone as young as Annabeth with them would make Thalia look like a teenage mom. Since nobody wanted attention called to the small group, it was best to make it look like a girl and her boyfriend were doing a little grocery shopping. Even so, Annabeth wasn't entirely secure waiting outside in this scary neighborhood. Not that she was going to say anything. Oh, no; that'd just make her look like a baby in front of Luke.

Annabeth was actually fine until a lady wearing leopard print sat on the bench next to her. The lady wore tons and tons of makeup; so much so that it looked like there was a mold over her actual face. Annabeth could smell the strong scent of the hairspray that held the woman's hair the way she wore it from across the bench. Her heels were really high; Annabeth wondered how she could even stand up in those shoes. The lady reached into a purse and pulled out a package and a small box. From the package, the woman retrieved something that Annabeth knew to be a cigarette from her health classes. From the small box, she took a match and struck it. As she lit the match, she seemed to notice Annabeth's presence.

"Wanna light, kiddo?" the woman asked, breathing out a large puff.

"The hairspray you're wearing is flammable," Annabeth informed her. "And there's over a hundred different things in cigarettes that are deadly to people."

"Great," the woman chuckled. "Let's just hope that I'm far enough away from you that you won't catch on fire, too, kiddo."

"My name is Annabeth," she informed the woman.

The woman laughed. "Alright then, Annabeth. Don't let people push you around much, do you?"

Annabeth had no response to that, so she instead chose to say "Why are you wearing that much makeup?"

The woman chuckled, "Why aren't you?" But she didn't give Annabeth a chance to respond to that. "Listen, kiddo-"

"Annabeth."

"Annabeth, then. Don't you never let nobody offer you a smoke, or a breath, or a chew, or a pill, or a drink, or a needle, or anythin' else that's dangerous, all right? You're too damn smart to screw yourself up like that. You'll go places, ki- Annabeth."

"And you?" Annabeth asked, chin out. She'd taken this from grownups all her life; this woman may have been a bit different, but they were all the same.

"And me what? I wasn't smart like you. I screwed myself up, and now look where I am. Workin' the corners cheap and waitin' for some girl workin' in the cathouse across the street with me to give me pills."

Were pills one of the things that the lady had just forbidden her to take?

"And don't you dare even think that," the woman said with a sharp, knowing glance. "There are things that you shouldn't do because you're worth it, and there're things that I'll do 'cause I'm not. No pills. No snorts, no drinks, no smokes, no inhalin' nothin' but oxygen, catch my drift?"

Annabeth nodded.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, until a man with dark, greasy hair walked by the bench a few feet away from the lady and Annabeth. He winked at the lady, motioned for her to follow him, and threw a wad of money at her feet. The man walked away, assuming she would follow him.

"Wha... he just _gave _you money?" Annabeth said in wonder.

"Comes at a price that ain't worth payin,'" the woman warned somberly. "New rule. Don't work in a cathouse. Even if this looks cool, right? Don't. Swear to God, it ain't worth it," the woman's voice dropped to just above a whisper. "It sure as hell ain't worth it."

As the woman clicked away on her hot-pink high heels, Annabeth sat in silence, mulling her new rules over. Since she didn't know half of what the lady was talking about, she guessed it wouldn't be that hard. She waited about two more minutes for Thalia and Luke to come out, each one with a grocery bag sung over a wrist.

"Sorry we took so long, Annabeth," Luke said, "but the lines were monstrous."

"That's okay. Luke?"

"Yeah?"

"What's a cathouse?"


End file.
